Help – I tried to send a giant attachment and it’s stuck in the Outbox!

Thanks so much - this was great advice I had an attachment of 5MB which was jamming my whole email programme and I have now managed to fix it. Thanks for your help,

Helen

Nothing is working tried all of the above. What is left

Several of you mentioned that you never had this problem with Outlook 2003. Well I have 2003 and about 18 months ago began having the same problem. Been using 2003 on same computer and ISP since....2003. Never had the problem before. Suspicious. Could it have come along with one of MS's "update's" or "patches"? Also, I can send (forward) from Verizon's web site with no problem, as well as Yahoo, but from my Outlook it often gets hungup trying to send a 400kb message! It appears there IS no real solution to this innate quagmire that works for everybody. It's obviously a very common glitch. Hopefully MS is working on a permanent solution for us. NOT holding my breath!! They'd rather pass the buck.

Everyone: This is an issue that we're investigating further. Previous we were not aware of the scope of the issue or that these problems were affecting situations outside of large e-mails. If anyone who is running into this issue can provide us some more details (below) it will us better understand the problem.

In particular, it would be useful to know: your ISP, your e-mail host (if different), version of Outlook (from Help>About), account type (Exchange, POP, IMAP, HTTP, or Outlook Live Connector), and frequency of occurrence.

Thanks, --Ryan

Thank you! Your advice worked perfectly... Ta Tiffany

I'm using the latest version of Microsoft Outlook on a brand new PC (well, it was new in January anyhow) and I'm running XP Professional with an Intel Quad 4 processor. I use Rogers Hi-speed cable internet which is routed to my computer via a LAN cable and a NetGear router. I use TrendMicro internet security (came with the OS). Like everyone else, emails of around 2MB get stuck in the outbox continually sending to recipients (to their annoyance and frustration) every time the automatic send and receive runs. I know how to stop the email from sending multiple times - simply watch the email's progress and wait for the "completed successfully" message (which is also accompanied by an error report) and then move it to the sent folder before it starts preparing to send again - you get about 30 seconds. This, however, is not a satisfactory solution since I not only have to sit and watch the email take an inordinate amount of time to send, but also have to check with my recipients - clients - that they have successfully received the email. Not only that but the email goes to the bottom of the sent folder because it effectively has no "send" date on it. What I really want to know is WHY IS IT HAPPENING?

It didn't happen before!!! AND WHY HAS MICROSOFT NOT FIXED THE PROBLEM? The problem is not any of the above suggestions - I can send over 10MB through web mail - I can receive large files, I am NOT running Vista (have never run Vista on this computer), I am NOT on dial-up. I've tried turning off the antivirus for outgoing mail and it makes no difference. WHAT I WANT TO KNOW IS HOW TO INCREASE THE ALLOWABLE FILE SIZE IN OUTLOOK That is the question I typed into the Outlook Help dialog box and there were no answers but instead an MS link from "A message with a large attachment is stuck in the Outbox" took me to this blog. Surely, since I've had my computer (AND my Microsoft Outlook software) now for seven months this issue should have been resolved. We should not have to sit waiting for a large email to send, move it and then confirm with our recipient that it has been received. Microsoft - Please fix the problem - we paid good money to be able to use the most up-to-date software and like someone said above it seems to have gone backwards in functionality not forwards. Thank you

I have become a whiz at deleting these e-mails - the filesize it happens with keeps getting smaller. Used to be over a meg, now even under 800 k gets stuck. I have had to switch to using my free hotmail account that works perfectly!! Too bad Outlook costs a ton and can't work as well as a free-bee. SO, my question is will I ever be able to use Outlook to send largish files again? It kinda defeats the purpose of broadband. My hosting company is LunarPages - I can't imagine that it is the host problem since I have changed hosts and versions of outlook and computers and operating systems (now Vista) and the problem is still there! Now that was a nice bit of troubleshooting on my part - huh?

My problem is simply that when I send multiple emails, one or two of them always get stuck in the outbox and no matter what I do to send them, they won't send. There stuck! What to do?

I tried working offline, shutting down outlook, restarting outlook and then deleting...didn't work. HOWEVER, if you turn your internet OFF after shutting down outlook, then reopen outlook, then delete...it worked for me. I restarted the internet, clicked to work online again and everything is in working order. Thank you Brian Worsley for the fix. But I agree that I shouldn't have to do this step for Outlook to work properly...

I have an email stuck in the outbox that is only 3kb! I've tried all of the above to delete it, move it with no success.

Here's what I do. I go to the Task Manager/Processes tab and stop the OUTLOOK.EXE under Image Name column. If I have more than one OUTLOOK.EXE in that list, I usually can't open Outlook, so I delete all but one. If I have a large attachment stuck, I delete the OUTLOOK.EXE that is the most huge.

***SOLVED*** - after going offline, restarting, blah blah blah if you are still getting the "already started sending message" JUST HIS SEND/RECEIVE, and then delete!!!  It will work :)

A simpler solution would be to get rid of these outdated size restrictions or provide a compression utility within Outlook to handle large files like contracts and other very common business documents.